Forum Barcelona

Rather severe building with rough dark blue lavaesque treatment to facades spiced up with cut-outs and jerky glazed strips. These strips are striated with mirrors trying to reduce the weight of the ‘floating blue cheesecake’. Below the macho cantilevers lies what on my visit appeared to be a no-man’s land of patterns and blank facades. Perhaps over time – as this part of the city becomes more populated and integral, and in sunnier months – this building will start to engage more.

The soffit and many of the walls are clad in a burnished metal pockmarked with endive-like patterns. A brave building for its materials and use of form, but what impression does Herzog & de Meuron´s building give to visitors one wonders?